Body flex, as I understand yall's intended iteration, is only really noticed in older vehicles and convertibles in real life, and the majority of vehicles that have it are Body-on-frame vehicles. Unibodies don't seem to suffer from it all that much, for the most part(Convertibles the exception)
Take, for example, the bed and cab of my 1985 F150. The bed flops about so much that if you stare at the gap between the bed and the cab through the split rear window, you can see it moving with your own eyeballs. It moves far enough to nearly close the inch-and-a-half gap Ford put there. It's 2007 replacement, however, needs a 200FPS camera minimum to pick up the flex between it's bed and cab, and this allows Ford to close the gap between these two parts considerably.
Newer cars are made stiffer, to improve handling greatly. They don't really flex at all. They only really flex when you hit something, whether it a pothole or another car.
The flex that would be most against handling, to the vehicles the game currently has, is actually called chassis warping. Gran Turismo has had it for a while, and altho not at all visible(Vehicle shapes remain perfect), the handling goes to shit after about 15,000 miles, and then you must purchase a repair to get it to handle right again.
If car mileage was included in LFS, there would be a simple calculation that based grip on the front and grip on the rear against miles on the car, with more miles producing more grip loss. Wouldn't even need calculation in real time, but instead could be calculated when the game is saved, or when the car is pitted, for on-the-fly adjustments to the handling. All it needs is the equation set created and the mileage counter implemented and we have a body warping setup that wouldn't cause any performance issues to the computer.
Some vehicles would have a more sensitive equation than others, for example, the Cabriolet's would warp alot easier than the F1 or hatchbacks, which are the hardest to warp.
The kind of flex required to accurately simulate body flex on older vehicles/pickups is a moot point ATM, since LFS has neither of these. All it has is newer unibody-based autos.
I, for one, wouldn't really mind the minor unrealistic lack of body flex if LFS started packin' some pickups either. I just love trucks, and love trying to defy the laws of physics with them
in video games, of course.
And regarding RoR, that game is a bit of a showoff of the physics engine. I've coded cars for it myself. One is a small FF sedan, the other a futuristic 6X6 desert truck. Both of them behave like springs when you hit something. I've also got a series of screenshots of the skinned and textured sedan passing right through a pole without touching it. Realistic, isn't it?
